Measuring Laypeople’s Trust in Experts in a Digital Age: The Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory (METI)

“To evaluate the model fit, we used directives given by Schreiber and colleagues [49].”

“When developing the inventory, we took into account previous work on scales measuring credibility [27,29], but adapted this to fit the theoretical ideas underlying the concept of epistemic trustworthiness.”

“Trusting experts also presents challenges (Hendriks et al., 2015; Hertzum, 2014; Maister et al., 2012).”

“13) is largely driven by countries with a high degree of corruption (primarily Latin American countries as well as sub-Saharan African countries), as indicated by a significant but very low-powered (1 − β = 0.25 at α = 0.05) interaction effect of the Gini index and Transparency International’s…”

“Seminal work by Mayer and colleagues (1995) has identified expertise, integrity, and benevolence as crucial dimensions of trust, and empirical evidence supports these three dimensions (e.g., Hendriks et al., 2015).”

“We applied the Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory (METI; Hendriks, Kienhues, & Bromme, 2015) to assess perceived expertise of the author.”

“Further still, other scholars focus on measures of trustworthiness (rather than trust) and operationalize the construct as being composed of expertise, integrity, and benevolence (e.g., Hendriks et al., 2015).”

“Integrity and benevolence have been shown to represent two dimensions of epistemic trust (Hendriks et al., 2015, 2016; Mayer & Davis, 1999).”

“The Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory (Hendriks et al., 2015) was used to assess how trustworthy the person arguing in the scientific debate was perceived to be.”

“They include teaching about source features that might allow one to judge a scientist’s trustworthiness (Bromme et al., 2018; Hendriks et al., 2015) and teaching cues that might allow one to judge credibility (or plausibility, see Sinatra & Lombardi, 2020/this volume), such as the use of technical…”

“It also requires believing that scientists are honest (Baier 1986) or have integrity (Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman 1995) or adherence to scienti fi c standards (Hendriks, Kienhues, and Bromme 2015).”

“2 This is because, the argument goes, cyberspaces pose greater challenges to our cognitive ability to decide whom to trust (Hendriks et al., 2015).”

“…that examine factors or indicators that inform public perceptions of experts use different conceptualizations, with some focusing on trust or trustworthiness (e.g., Besley et al., 2021; Hendriks et al., 2015) and others preferring to foreground concepts such as credibility (Fiske & Dupree, 2014).”

“Conceptually, they should discuss whether distrust is ‘just’ a lack of trust, or a different phenomenon [Hardin, 2004, p. esp.”

“Alternatively, interpersonal communication about CNI among lay people might culminate in deference to experts with deeper knowledge of issues, thereby reducing backlash(50).”

“…will occur as a function of positive combination of beliefs/perceptions about benevolence, integrity, and ability (hence the language used above) (Hendriks et al., 2015; Mayer et al., 1995; PytlikZillig et al., 2016; Schoorman et al., 2007), although some researchers collapse integrity and…”

“By considering different theoretical andmethodological frameworks of trust, trustworthiness or credibility, we use the epistemic trustworthiness inventory by Hendriks et al. (2015) as a starting pointwhichwas specifically developed for evaluating scientific experts in online environments.”

“As the preceding review illustrates, individual dimensions can work together, and certain components of source credibility may be more salient in particular communication contexts (Beall et al., 2017; Hendriks et al., 2015; Horton et al., 2016; NASEM, 2017b).”

“However, since the three dimensions might be intercorrelated (Hendriks et al., 2015), we assess the effects of experimental manipulations on all three dimensions of epistemic trustworthiness, while assuming differences in trustworthiness ratings between groups only for benevolence and integrity: H1.”

“For lay people, assessments of credibility and trustworthiness are complicated by the inconsistent nature of information available online about the communicators of scientific information: information can be incomplete, misleading and difficult to source [3].”

“Then, participants completed the METI trust measure (Hendriks et al., 2015), consisting of 14 bipolar items measuring morality-based trust (e.g., dishonest—honest, α = .98) and expertise-based trust (e.g., incompetent—competent, α = .95) in the imagined scientists on a 7-point scale.”

“Readers can use different cues to infer the level of the author's expertise by paying attention to credentials, experience, and affiliation (Bråten et al., 2018; Hendriks et al., 2015).”

“The trustworthiness of the two experts was assessed with the Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory (Hendriks et al., 2015).”

“Different scales exist that refer to scientists or scientific experts (Fiske & Dupree, 2014; Hendriks et al., 2015) or that vary the object of trust within the same scale (e.g., scientists, scientific theories, science), such as the Trust in Science and Scientists Inventory (Nadelson et al., 2014).”

“While we do not know of specific tests of the Integrative Model of Organizational Trust in relation to variables from the Integrated Behavioral Model, it seems plausible to hypothesize that trust would also correlate with the likelihood that someone will be motivated to consider information about a communication behav…”

“In digital settings, evaluations of epistemic trustworthiness of expert sources rely on considering an expert’s expertise (possessing relevant knowledge), integrity (adhering to the rules of their profession), and benevolence (having the interest of others at heart) (Hendriks et al., 2015).”

“, participants rated Dr. Romberg’s trustworthiness with the Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory (METI; Hendriks et al., 2015), consisting of 14 opposite adjective pairs measuring expertise (e.g. competent–incompetent, Cronbach’s α = .94) and integrity and benevolence (e.g.…”

“The normative question is: why should people trust in science? Answers to this question tend to spell out philosophical conditions under which trust is warranted (Irzik and Kurtulmus, 2019), and may focus on the reliability of science as a process, including the interplay between criticism and consensus among diverse…”

“Subsequently, they completed the Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory (METI; Hendriks et al., 2015), and the treatment check was conducted.”

“…theorized that a scientist’s epistemic trustworthiness depends on an audience’s evaluations of the scientist’s integrity, expertise, and benevolence (Hendriks et al., 2015).1 A trustworthy scientist, therefore, would have not only the necessary credentials and experience to speak with authority…”

“The Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory [45] was used to assess how trustworthy the forum post author was perceived to be.”

“23 instead of three-dimensional trustworthiness measures like the Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory (METI) 45 , because it lacks the openness dimension.”

“…the Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory, which captures three dimensions of an expert’s perceived trustworthiness – namely their perceived expertise, integrity, and benevolence (Hendriks et al., 2015) – selecting the three items with the highest factor loadings for each dimension.”

“The Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory (METI; Hendriks et al., 2015) was used to assess the extent of epistemic trustworthiness that student-teachers attribute to the different sources.”

“Participants also provided ratings of their perceived trust-worthiness of scientists 32 and indicated their belief in polarizing science topics (climate change, vaccinations and genetically modified foods) 21 .”

“Both ingredients are necessary to build a trustworthy scientist: Scientists would not be seen as scientists if they were perceived as incompetent [6, 13, 22], while morality is arguably the most important predictor of trust [10, 24].”

“Participants’ evaluations of experts were measured with 14 items developed by Hendriks et al. (2015), which included items relating to expertise, integrity, and benevolence.”

“The language use of information providers is regarded as a prominent clue to evaluate the characteristics of the providers, especially in web-based communication [51,52].”

“Behaving according to professional ethics and morality and being aware of one’s social responsibility (Bentele, 1994, 1998; Giddens, 1991) are of prime importance for trustworthy scientists (Hendriks et al., 2015).”

“Measures of sleep disturbance, such as a reduced proportion of time spent in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep over a night and the occurrence of sleep apnea, have been proposed as potentially important objective sleep problems in veterans [3,45-48].”

“, assessing the veracity of scientific information by relying on objective criteria such as evaluating the study design) challenging for them (e.g., Bromme et al., 2010, 2015; Bromme and Goldman, 2014; Hendriks et al., 2015; Brown et al., 2017).”

“Recipients take three different dimensions into account when evaluating the trustworthiness of a source (Hendriks et al., 2015): They assess whether a source is knowledgeable and pertinent (expertise), and whether a source of information (SI) has “the right attitude towards what they are doing” (Wilholt, 2013, p.”

“Some authors have operationalized trustworthiness by focusing on characterbased elements (e.g. honesty, integrity) (Cologna et al., 2021; Renn & Levine, 1991), while others have used a combination of both competence- and character-based elements (Fiske & Dupree, 2014; Hendriks et al., 2015).”

“…that potentially foster trust-related beliefs, such as whether scientists are perceived as caring about stakeholders (i.e., warmth or benevolence), similar to stakeholders, willing to listen to stakeholders, and competent (Besley, Dudo, & Yuan, 2018; Fiske & Dupree, 2014; Hendriks et al., 2015).”

“…to study participants in a way that specifically connected the tactics to one of three different trustrelated objectives addressed in previous research (Besley, Dudo, & Yuan, 2018) and the literature on the dimensionality of trustworthiness beliefs (Besley et al., 2021; Hendriks et al., 2015).”

“Perceived intentions can also be construed in a broader fashion, as in theories of credibility emphasizing perceptions of cue-givers ’ integrity, benevolence, or proso-ciality (Hendriks, Kienhues and Bromme 2015).”

“…in scientists have often focussed their analysis on factors falling within this Ability, Benevolence, Integrity (ABI) model of trustworthiness (e.g. Hendriks et al., 2015; Reif and Guenther, 2022; Wintterlin et al., 2022), although sometimes employing rather different terms (e.g. ‘warmth’,…”

“Some recent efforts to measure perceptions of scientists’ trustworthiness have used the integrative model of trust (Besley et al., 2021; Hendriks et al., 2015), but further investigation is needed into how these perceptions form.”

“While explanations might contribute to understanding, trust seals could potentially offer a more direct path to achieving calibrated trust, particularly when issued by competent institutions perceived as both honest and well-meaning (Hendriks, Kienhues, and Bromme 2015).”

“We measured the perceived trustworthiness of the policy proposers using the Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory (Hendriks et al., 2015).”

“To assess the trustworthiness of the information source, five measures were used: the German version of the Machiavellianism Subscale from the Dirty Dozen Scale [39,40] was used to assess how manipulative the forum post author was perceived to be (Machiavellianism), the Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory [41…”

“That is, we specify epistemic trustworthiness as those futures of scientists, that make laypeople depend on their ability or competence and defer to them due to own limited resources and knowledge [86].”

“Hendriks et al. (2015) asked individuals to use the Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory , including all three of these source trust-worthiness dimensions, to rate six brief author descriptions.”

“In particular, we relied on the Munster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory (METI) from Hendriks et al. (2015).”

“Elliott et al. (2017) used an ad hoc scale; we used the Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory (METI; Hendriks et al., 2015), which substantially overlaps but is not identical to the Elliott et al. (2017) scale.”